Books in the Great Shakespeareans series

The four writers featured in this volume represent different aspects of the modernist response to Shakespeare. James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Samuel Beckett were all exceptionally learned and their art takes a delight in difficulty. But the scurrility, irreverence and playfulness they found in Shakespeare are essential features of what they themselves were to do with him. They were particularly drawn to Shakespeare's outcasts, and to the experiences of marginality, estrangement, indigence and craziness. In return they have helped to shape the ways in which we now read Shakespeare himself.

Offers an account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, nationally and internationally. This volume assesses the contribution of David Garrick, John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons and Edmund Kean to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays.

This volume looks at Marx and Freud, who, though not 'Shakespeareans' in the usual academic or theatrical sense, were both deeply informed by Shakespeare's writings, and have both had enormous influence on the understanding and reception of Shakespeare. The first section of this volume consists of a discussion of Marx's use of Shakespeare by Crystal Bartolovich followed by an essay on Shakespeareans' recent uses of Marx by Jean E. Howard. The volume's second half, written by David Hillman, juxtaposes a discussion of Freud's use of Shakespeare with a meditation on Shakespeare's 'use' of Freud. Each part can be read fruitfully independently of the others, but the sum is greater than the parts, offering an engagement with two of the most influential thinkers in Western modernity and their interchanges with, arguably, the most influential figure of early modernity: Shakespeare.

Focuses on Shakespeare's reception by figures in Victorian theatre. This book offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally.